GOP Candidate McCotter: China Is Threat to US

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, the latest entrant in the GOP race for the White House, wants to restructure the banking system as his first item of business should he win the presidency, he tells Newsmax.TV exclusively.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter says he is drafting legislation that will “put fiscal solvency back into Social Security." (Getty Images Photo)

And, in a wide-ranging interview, McCotter said Washington has to stop cozying up to China and treat the world’s most populous nation as a threat.

McCotter, a five-term representative from Michigan, was talking to Newsmax just days after announcing his entry into what is now a 10-horse field for the Republican nomination.

When asked why he was joining the scrum, he said, “We need a new voice in the race. People have told me we are not seeing a comprehensive view both to the economy and the security of the United States.”

Other priorities for a McCotter administration would be foreign policy and reducing the power of judges and the federal bureaucracy.

“We have to talk more about what we’re going to do with Iran to implode it beneath its own people’s aspirations for freedom. We have to treat the People’s Republic of China as a strategic threat and rival model of governance that impairs our security and our prosperity. And we have to deal with an imperial judiciary and federal bureaucracy that continually tries to inject itself into how our families and our communities work.”

When asked what he meant by “imperial judiciary,” McCotter said, “Judicial activism. When they decide they are going to make law rather than interpret it and foist their decisions upon people. It’s the least accountable branch of government as is the federal bureaucracy and it leaves communities and individuals thinking to themselves that their vote doesn’t matter or that their cherished way of life is endangered by forces outside their control.”

Although insisting he was in the race to win, McCotter acknowledged that he is a long shot. “That’s why we have elections. You can only take your message out there and see the response to it.

“I’m very interested in making sure that, if it does resonate, we can build a coalition that will march beneath or beside the Republican banner so we can end an administration which has been very hurtful, economically and in terms of our security of the United States.

“We have 14 million unemployed people in this country and up to 30 million people that cannot switch jobs because there aren’t better ones there. We have inflation rising and wages declining. We see Iran starting to fill the vacuums in Afghanistan and in Iraq and with Pakistan. This is not where the United States needs to be.”

McCotter said he is drafting legislation that will “put fiscal solvency back into Social Security” and allow people to take their money and invest it. That will lead to “the greatest long term reduction of government debt in American history.”

“It’s about moving towards self-government,” he said. “It’s about ending the welfare state that continues to try to make people who can take care of themselves dependent upon government largesse and the redistribution of wealth, because that will put us on a continued path towards decline.

“Instead, what we need to do is go through, root and branch, the federal government to ensure it is only taking care of individuals who cannot help themselves or who need temporary assistance. That’s the way to preserve the safety net.”

McCotter said he has an answer to critics who contend that Republicans are out to kill Medicare, saying people have to realize that Obamacare would cut half a trillion dollars from the system. “The Paul Ryan budget cut zero from current recipients and goes towards self-government, allowing patient choice and consumer control within the system.

“This is why the Democrats oppose it,” he said. “Because it’s antithetical to the concept of government-run healthcare where bureaucrats decide on the comparative effectiveness of research, what treatments you are going to get and how the government is going to determine who best suits their need for the future.”